Summarizing the Case Against the Bombing By Gar Lipow

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<big><big><big>Summarizing the Case Against
the Bombing 
</big>By ZNeter Gar Lipow</big></big>
 
<blockquote>
Stop the bombing now. Cruise missile
humanitarianism has multiplied the number of Kosovar Albanian homeless and dead, without
saving one life, or stopping one atrocity. By highest estimates, the Kosovo civil war
drove 400,000 ethnic Albanians from their homes in 1998; 30,000 of these fled Kosovo. The first two weeks of the bombing increased this to
over one million homeless Kosovars; more than 400,000 of whom fled Kosovo. From March 26th through April 13th,
NATO escalated the atrocities to double those in the whole year of 1998. 
NATO bears the same responsibility a police
officer does in a hostage situation the responsibility not to get the hostages
killed by charging at the kidnapper in a macho frenzy. The
CIA and Pentagon both warned our government that it would provoke massacres before it
dropped the first kind and cuddly bomb. Milosevic rose to power, in part, by stirring up
Serbian nationalist sentiment over Kosovo. 
Before our fighter jets flattened large portions
of Serbia, Milosevic did not have everything his own way. There was a strong democratic
opposition in Yugoslavia, and a strong opposition press. Milosevic
was not in a position to completely ignore public opinion. It is far from sure that he
could have escalated the level of atrocities.
The first bomb that came close to killing a
Yugoslav child changed this. As would happen in the
U.S. if bombs were falling on New York, Atlanta, Chicago and Seattle, Yugoslavians rallied
round the flag. So long as NATO bombs fall on the suburbs and railways of
Yugoslavia, there is no atrocity Milosevic can commit which will cost him popular support. War is freedom for tyrants. 
In Kosovo, Serbia, and throughout Yugoslavia, NATO
aims tenderhearted explosives at oil refineries, power plants, television stations, and
office buildings and quite often misses. It has admitted to unintentionally bombing
residential suburbs, civilian factories, a passenger rail car, and part of a convoy of
Albanian refugees. Pilots of British Harriers,
tired of frequent misses, have turned to cluster bombs, which spray humanitarian shrapnel
over a wide area. 
In spite of claims to surgical precision, this
amounts to indiscriminate terror bombing. Dennis J.
Kucinich (D-OH) who initially supported the bombing now opposes it for just this reason.
In the April 9, 1999 New York Times he writes:
 the destruction of the civilian infrastructure of Yugoslavia has become part
of the strategy to end the war on Kosovo We are bringing down terror on the Serbian
people the Serbian people will never accept a peace with the ethnic Albanians as
long as we are dropping bombs on their heads. 
This war threatens more than the population of
former Yugoslavia. It threatens the stability of
the entire region. Albania, perhaps the poorest country in Europe is overwhelmed by the
refugee influx. Macedonia, which already has a strong Albanian minority, fears becoming
another Kosovo.  As of this writing, the
Yugoslav military had crossed an international border to take over a small Albanian
village. The Balkans were historically flashpoints for major wars, because major powers
got involved in local disputes.
Well, we had to do something didnt we?
Actually we didnt. In our own lives, when
confronted by a problem, how many of us would choose making things worse as an alternative
to doing nothing?
But, in fact, there were alternatives. The New
York Times of April 8, 1999, writing of the failed Rambouillet negotiations said In a little-noted resolution of the Serbian
Parliament just before the bombing, when that hardly independent body rejected NATO troops
in Kosovo, it also supported the idea of U.N. forces to monitor a political settlement
there. Milosevic had accepted most U.S.
demands during Rambouillet negotiations except NATO
monitors. If he was willing to accept U.N.
monitors instead, should we not have explored the possibility before we began bombing?
There still are alternatives. Stop the bombing. Forget ground troops. Start real negotiations. Involve the U.N., and what
remains of the democratic Yugoslav opposition. Some
armed third party will probably be needed to enforce whatever solution is agreed to, and
protect all groups in Kosovo from ethnic cleansing. But both sides of the conflict must
agree to such enforcers. We could also provide more aid to the refugees, actually give
them refuge if needed. We should also remember that
the Yugoslav army currently enforces the death penalty for avoiding service in their
military, and offer refuge to Serb draft resistors and deserters.
Some people, admitting that bombing is useless,
are supporting ground troops instead. A strong U.S.
force on the ground will make everything all right. After
all, even if we made a well-meaning blunder in this case (no doubt dragged into the
situation by our NATO allies), doesnt the U.S. generally do the right thing in
foreign policy?
Well, no it doesnt.
The idea that we were dragged into
this by NATO is wrong to begin with. In the context of this war, the U.S. is NATO.
Other NATO countries provide bases, and some of the military force. But the U.S. leads
NATO. The U.S has made essentially all the decisions, both military and diplomatic.
The U.S. may be the best place it the world to
live, but people outside the U.S. would just as soon not have us involved in their civil
wars. Most of the world winces when it hears the U.S. is about to take action. Our
humanitarian sanctions against Saddam Hussein manage to kill about 5,000 Iraqi children
each month.  Weve been bombing Iraq for
years; no doubt the Iraq government will fall any day now.

In retaliation for terrorist bombing of U.S.
embassies in Africa, we managed to bomb a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan responsible for
producing most of Sudans prescription drugs. At
the time, we claimed it was partially owned by Bin Laden and helped produce nerve gas. It
later turn out that Bin Laden had no ownership stake in the plant (direct or indirect) and
the chemicals we thought to be a nerve gas precursor were actually used in the making of
beneficial drugs. Oops! Sorry bout that!
Recent humanitarian
catastrophes in which we did not intervene include: 80,000 dead in Algeria, 10,000 dead in
the Ethiopian-Eritrean war within the past month, 820,000 dead in Rwanda during the last
five years, 1.5 million dead in Sudan during the last 15 years.
Worse, we ignore atrocities by our client states,
states we could simply order to stop the killing, NATO member Turkey has killed more than
40,000 Kurds (the same ethnic group we are bombing Iraq, as you read this, to protect)
using weapons it bought from the U.S. 
East Timor was an independent country until
Indonesia took it over in 1975, killing 200,000 people (more than 1/3rd of the
population). Indonesia launched the invasion hours after President Ford and Secretary of
State Henry Kissinger met with Indonesian dictator Suharto. The U.S. then doubled military
aid to Indonesia, blocked the UN taking effective enforcement action, and continued to
sell new weapons, particularly helicopters for the next two decades. Since 1975, the
United States has sold more than $1.1 billion worth of weaponry to Indonesia. The latest massacre in East Timor took place a few days
ago, when paramilitaries armed by the Indonesian government slaughtered a church full of
refugees.
In short, given the U.S. record, there is no
reason to expect a ground force invasion will have superior results to our current policy
of better living through bombing. Negotiations are
not glamorous. Rambo would have single handedly
ended the war. John Wayne would have taken along some sidekicks. But in the real world, negotiations are the only way to
save the lives the Kosovar Albanians especially if we decide that the occasional
Serbian life has value as well.
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